Scammers Scooped Up $500M in Katrina Aid

The Bush administration now acknowledges it is
trying to recover nearly $500 million from people who improperly
received federal aid money intended to help victims of two deadly
hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, along the Gulf Coast two years ago.
It said the amount may increase further.

"This is a moving target and not finite," said James McIntyre,
a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The government's newest estimate of improper aid represents $494
million FEMA paid to 134,000 people who were ineligible for the aid
they received. More than half the money went to people who couldn't
prove residency, according to FEMA figures. Overpayments and
duplicate payments account for most of the remainder.

The amount had exceeded $500 million, but the agency wrote off
nearly $27 million because of appeals or hardship waivers. The $500
million figure would represent nearly $1 of every $10 in government
aid intended to help storm victims.

Congressional investigators determined people provided false
addresses, other people's social security numbers and Gulf Coast
addresses that did not exist. Because of the chaotic situation and
loose controls, nearly half the 11,000 people who received
emergency debit cards also received FEMA checks, investigators
said.

The Homeland Security Department's inspector general said its
Office of Emergency Management Oversight will continue to audit how
FEMA dispensed aid to hurricane victims, including new uses of
data-mining programs to identify duplicate payouts.

So far, FEMA has recovered about $13.6 million. The agency
itself doesn't have authority to investigate suspected fraud. It
steers cases to the Department of Homeland Security, which then can
refer them to the U.S. Justice Department for prosecution.

The Justice Department has prosecuted about 800 people for
charges stemmed from hurricane fraud, with the largest number
occurring in southern Mississippi, according to its Hurricane
Katrina Fraud Task Force.

An Associated Press analysis earlier this year reported that
after Katrina and Rita smashed into Louisiana and Mississippi, the
federal government handed out financial aid to more homes in some
neighborhoods than actually existed. People claiming to live in as
many as 162,750 homes that did not exist before the storms may have
improperly received as much as $1 billion in tax money, the AP's
analysis found.

A Government Accountability Office report released in February
estimated between $600 million and $1.4 billion was improperly
spent on Katrina-related relief alone. The GAO, a congressional
watchdog agency, said money was used for guns, strippers and
tattoos, among other improper items.

While a substantial amount of the misspent money handed out
after the killer storms can be chalked up to the chaos that ensued
after tens of thousands fled their homes, some cases pointed to a
breakdown in the system.

On Tuesday, for example, a U.S. district judge in southern
Mississippi handed down a sentence for Danny Gene Hale, who
received more than $10,000 from FEMA for damage to a residence
where he no longer lived when the storms struck.

At the time, Hale was in federal custody for forging money
orders. Hale was ordered to serve four years and repay $10,400, a court
clerk said.

FEMA officials say they established safeguards to prevent
taxpayers from being bilked again so badly. When the storms struck,
an online system that allowed people to apply for aid provided
multiple checks against fraud. Agency officials believe much of the
fraud occurred via a telephone system that didn't have as many
safeguards.